It is true that kids say the darndest things…and mine are no exception.  Well actually, it is also true that I think my children are exceptional in every way [except perhaps their propensity to talk back though that very well may be genetic or at a minimum karmic…and not something I can hold against them.]

I am not sure why Danny is thinking about heaven when we are so busy living, but on my daddy’s yartzheit, he sure has me thinking too.  His first question was, “how long do you go to heaven for?”  The second, “where is it?”  The purity and absolute incredibleness of his mind about blew me over.  As if packing for a week long vacation to a “place” for a defined time and then coming home.  Ouch.  His thinking is very literal though it is also clear that he gets, already at age 6, that there is more to the story.  I wish I could climb into his head and see the details of what he is imagining.  If only it were true that heaven was a place we visit, temporarily [like to be fixed and healed], before returning home to the place we so clearly belong.  [Please resist the temptation to argue alternate realities or after-lives or other religious mumbo jumbo].

Last year, I thought L-U-C-K-Y 13.  Thirteen years, on the thirteenth day of the month, of the thirteenth year since my daddy vanished [read inexcusably unforgivably barbarically ripped] from this world [and the life and family who adored him] leaving wounds that cannot be healed.  I like being positive, dwelling on the cherished and truly beautiful, even if – now too long ago – memories,  but lucky?  I thought maybe this would be the turning point [13 really is a lucky number in my family] and this past year it would seem easier.  Capitalizing on our optimism and happiness, some kind of maturing out of early adolescence, less sharp, more easily understood reality or acceptance.  Nope.  Cancer continues to taunt us, and in no way more profound than the reality that my father has been in heaven, where ever that is, for what seems like forever.

We talk about my dad all the time.  Look at pictures, share stories, descriptions, and each of his four prized grandsons carries his name.   I wonder, all the time, how much of who I am is thanks to what he taught.  The good, the bad, and the ugly – I was my daddy’s girl.  I wonder what he would think about the girl in her 40’s as opposed to the girl in her 20’s that he left just as she was getting started in a grown-up world.  I wonder if he would approve of who we are, our choices, our lives.  I wonder about the relationship we would have shared now, the one with his grandchildren…  I wonder about too much.

But leave it to my Danny to actually ask the questions.  The questions that led me to lie to him, and then led me to also wonder just how far away heaven really was.  I told Danny, that one of our greatest powers, as humans, was to love and be in relationships with others. It is the quality of those relationships, I believe, that defines our experience in this world.  If we live well, we live forever in the hearts of those people to whom we mattered.  Even after our bodies stop living, I told him, our souls, which are our essence, become part of the world and never go away.  So, my sweet boy said, “I never want us to go to the heaven place, I want us to be here (or Atlanta or North Carolina) together.”  Me too Danny…was my response in barely a broken whisper.  I started to try and explain that nothing is forever but stopped myself short and said instead that every “right now” is the same thing as forever, and that is what it means to make every moment count.

Now I wonder, whether feeding my son the euphemistic load of crap we “ought” to believe about life and death did him any favors.  Or whether, and seemingly more likely, I just delayed the inevitable ache we all learn with loss.

Maybe I should have stuck with a more simple truth, that the feelings of love do persist through all of time and that I remain convinced heaven is what is before us – here on earth.  Maybe that is why my daddy feels so far away but still so close too.  That I have no idea what happens after or next but that being together here, now, in this life is still the best I could ever imagine.

After 14 years, my dad’s absence still crushes me beyond what words can communicate.  I sure do long for the simplicity of Danny’s view and the possibility that he is not as far away as I fear.

Whatever the truth – my precious boy, the real answer is anything your tender heart wants it to be.  Maybe I can be the first person to live “forever” after all.  If for no other reason, to make certain that you and your brother are safe and good the way my daddy wanted to do for Aunt Jenn and me.